Intro to Word Groups

When we say “learn grammar” we should really say “learn a grammar” because there is no one grammar that explains all of English.

We have some components on which pretty much everyone agrees: nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and so on. 

But we very quickly get into territory where different grammars not only label things in different ways, they sometimes explore completely different concepts—and this is completely fine. One grammar is not more ‘right’ than another.

What does this mean for us?

For one thing, you will probably find that we will talk about things one way here on Writelike, and then you will go to a website and see the same thing described differently.

Sometimes that difference is only superficial labelling, but sometimes the differences will be significant and might be confusing.

Don’t be surprised, panicked, or frustrated. Just be calm, accepting, and prepared to do some critical thinking to figure out if the differences are important or not.

On Writelike, we tend to use something called Functional Grammar

Functional grammar is, as the name suggests, concerned with the function of language—what is the language trying to do? 

For instance, at the highest level, language is all about describing people (or participants) doing things (or processes) under specific circumstances. For example:

Elias played that night.

That is a person–process–circumstance combo right there.

Functional grammar then goes on to break those components down into more detail, which is where we will begin in our word group lessons. 

You'll probably find that functional grammar overlaps with the school grammar you're used to; some terms will be familiar, some will be new. 

We hope that learning some functional grammar will make it easier for you to learn other grammars.